New AA Research Clusters Launched in 2011/12

Architectural Doppelgangers

Ines Weizman and Sam Jacob

The research cluster Architectural Doppelgangers aims to explore the relationship of architecture to the multivalent meanings and implications of copying. Subject to law the idea of the copy also brings profound moral disturbance to our idea of architecture. Though the profession increasingly relies on technologies of copy, duplication and replication the idea of originality remains a disciplinary foundation. Does the myth of the doppelganger haunt the discipline? Is architecture’s imminent death signalled by the encounter of its doppelgänger? Does its doubling create an evil twin? Or conversely, might architecture find a productive relationship with the culture of the copy? Originating with a sequence of public interviews, small symposia and talks that will examine a variety of intellectual products and properties, the cluster will explore two main questions: One concerns the nature of the copy, the other the problem of copyright.

CopyIn a comprehensive atlas of practices and forms, architecture doppelgangers, obscure cases of architectural curiosity will be archived, categorised and investigated in its myriad forms of duplication, doubling, faking, pirating and re-enactment. Interestingly, every research about a doppelganger always requires an intense study of the original. The question about the value and meaning of the authentic work of architecture as well as the technological possibilities for reproduction will pose very challenging questions for both historians, architects, students and legal experts.

CopyrightOn the basis of such an extensive atlas of ‘architecture doppelgangers’, we will investigate scientific and legal methods to assess the meaning and potentially also unsavoury dealings with architectural doubles. This part of the research will open perhaps also a more unconventional way to explore architecture between legality and illegality. It will concern the rights to architecture, that is, the meaning of the legal owner of the copyright as a private property, but also aims to think through a legal definition of ownership about architecture as a ‘public commons’.

new entry to the Piracy Collection
A reader compiled from the aaaaaarg.org for the Public School Seminar in Berlin
pdf link sent by Caleb Waldorf and printed as hardcopy in Istanbul
http://thepublicschool.org/thereisnothinglesspassive/thantheactoffleeing.html

Lots of academics and artists have indicated they are gonna come to the session but I am concerned that this event is not only an opportunity to have (another) very enjoyable discussion about philosophy, politics and ideas. Important as it is. It’s bait! It’s the perfect excuse for people who have been promising to get involved but need that final prompt to get down there! These are uncertain times for Occupy and this event is all about increasing the blood circulation, please help.

Would you please post the event to as many Undergraduate and graduate walls/blogs/noticeboards as you are able?
Thank you
Andy

An afternoon of talks, about the relevance of Deleuze and Guattari’s ideas to Occupy.

Deleuze and Guattari’s writings are considered, by political activists, philosophers, artists and writers to provide the most insightful analysis of the crisis we face today. It is claimed that the rhizomic, nomadic and creative nature of Occupy is inherently DeleuzeoGuattarian. This afternoon of talks tests these claims and asks; does Deleuze and Guattari’s conceptual apparatus scythe right through to the heart of capitalist production: do they provide vitalist, non-paranoid, (entirely pragmatic) systems of thought around which both a world can be torn down and a new one built?

How it feels to be free: becoming-together with Deleuze & Guattari.Jeremy Gilbert, Reader at the University of East London.

‘Minor Politics, Activism, and Occupy’.Nick Thoburn, Lecturer in sociology: University of Manchester.

Worldwide, Occupy will not publish a solidified list of aims or a manifesto, preferring to speak of a thousand struggles, a thousand acts of resistance spoken though thousands of voices. Is this the same as Deleuze and Guattari’s A Thousand Plateaus?Andrew Conio, Senior Lecturer University of Wolverhampton, Associate Lecturer Chelsea School of Art.

“ (…) there is a developing interest in the idea that classic texts, ‘lost’ books or previously hard-to-find publications can be simultaneously revived, reassessed and repositioned as new editions created by artists. In this, a book or text is both being made newly available and, equally importantly, being entered into what might be described as a process of print re-enactment: a renewed engagement with the history of a work, in which the processes of publishing as much as the text itself – its authorship, context and editorial ancestry – become both media for new art-making and venues for cultural historical inquiry.”